Recent Trends and Developments in the British Coal Mining Industry

Abstract

T nHE coal industry is by far the major source of primary fuel in Britain. To administer this industry, a public corporation, the National Coal Board, responsible through Parliament to the people, was set up on January 1, 1947. The Board thus became the greatest single employer of labor in the country, directing a labor force of nearly 800,000 workers. Opencast mining, originally the responsibility of the Ministry of Fuel and Power, was taken over by the National Coal Board on April 1, 1952. Each of nine Divisional Coal Boards, appointed by the National Board, controls one of the main coal fields or groups of coal fields in the country (Fig. 1). The Scottish Division comprises the concentration of coal fields in south Scotland ranging from Ayrshire in the west to East Fifeshire in the east; the Northern Division covers the Northumberland coal field and the smaller Cumberland field; the Durham Division coincides with the Durham coal field; the North Eastern Division is formed mainly of the Yorkshire section of the large Yorkshire, Derbyshire and Nottinghamshire coal field; the East Midland Division takes in the remainder of this coal field and the small south Derbyshire and Leicestershire coal field; the North Western Division includes the Lancashire and Cheshire and North Wales coal fields; the West Midlands Division combines the relatively restricted exposed coal fields of North Staffordshire, South Staffordshire, Cannock Chase, and Warwickshire, and their more extensive concealed extensions into one unit; the South Western Division, dominated by the important South Wales coal field, also includes the minor Forest of Dean and Bristol and Somerset coal fields; and, finally, the South Eastern Division looks after the wholly concealed Kent coal field. These nine divisions are further split up into 49 areas, each of which comprises a geographical grouping of several collieries. The National Coal Board shoulders a heavy responsibility; failure to raise the output of coal to a level sufficiently high to meet the increasing need for energy will have drastic repercussions on the country's economic stability and general well-being. Success in this task is governed by the amount of money effectively invested, by the numbers of men and officials employed at all levels, the time they work, and the effort and skill they put into their job with the tools made available to them by an efficient management.'